Perhaps it was the contrary sprit of the old magician
himself which impelled me to start this DVD not with its opening Beethoven
5 but with Wagner’s ‘Meistersinger’ Prelude. I was initially nonplussed
to observe no white hair and hands but instead shaky stills of the South
Bank, which are revealed as the opening slides of what was evidently
a delayed and not a live broadcast. But ten bars in, and there he is.
The grand theme swings away with verve and purpose - and Stokowski’s
clenched right fist is rotating in minuscule movements. That’s it, he
makes no other movement. After a while the left hand moves over the
fist to turn the page, and then maybe to make a small encouragement
to the strings, but the economy and effectiveness of his gestures is
breathtaking. Agreed, at the age of 90 (this and the Debussy come from
his birthday concert) he was hardly likely to be jumping around the
Festival Hall’s podium, but this is a farther distance than imaginable
from the fantasy created by Fantasia (in which its youthful and ever
vain subject willingly colluded), all imperious silhouette. The only
similarity is the magic factor - ‘How does he do it?’ A question even
more pertinent on this occasion, for as Stokowski Society President
Edward Johnson’s thorough and engaging notes reveal, Stoki stopped the
rehearsal of the Wagner after a few bars, saying ‘We don’t need to do
this - you all know it!’. Yet this is no run-through, but a paean of
joy and colour. The prelude’s concluding fugue bursts at the seams with
contrapuntal detail which Stoki is seemingly able to conjure from a
glance here, a raised hand there. Sections glide into one another like
molten iron, with a seemingly fully-formed and hardly flashy musical
artefact as the result.

Debussy’s Prelude suspends time in the same miraculous
way that Wagner’s Prelude filled it. We’re unused to seeing the initial
solo conducted, but Stokowski manages it with three or maybe four gestures
that do not impose upon the flautist but lead him on, Pan-like. Where
Boulez’s faun is withdrawn, shadowed even, Stoki’s is voluptuous, frankly
erotic. With the first violins granted freedom to bow individually,
their phrases swell and contract ripely. If the balance seems preternaturally
clear, that must also be due to the privilege of seeing as well as hearing
what Stokowski wants, but more often than not there is no explanation
for the translation of his appearance into the musicians intuitive understanding
- other than those vague dabbings, ‘charisma’, and ‘personality’.

If the two Austro-German symphonies from three years
earlier don’t capture the same air of unrepeatable perfection that makes
you want to hit the repeat button again and again, there is still so
much at which to look and learn. Though the bowings are no longer free,
they are eccentrically placed in the first movement of the Unfinished,
breaking the first phrase and placing the high point of others later
than is usual. It’s not just the bowings, either; cellos and basses
are ranged each in one long row along the back of the Fairfield Hall,
with the woodwind where the cellos would usually sit. The woodwind principals’
consequent proximity to the conductor seems to inspire from them solos
of remarkable poise and freedom. It’s worth the price of the DVD to
see the clarinet phrase the long first theme of the second movement.

Monteux in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice is what it says
on the packet, a bonus. There’s no question who the sorcerer is here.
For those of us under the age of 35 who started watching television
just as television executives started opining that no one wanted to
see stuffed shirts playing dead men’s music, this cooperation between
BBC, IMG, EMI and the French group Ideale Audience International could
conjure a musical Eldorado.

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